I'm a literature geek fascinated by the transformative role that technology plays in business. I started covering cleantech in 2007, with a particular focus on practical solutions that help companies, cities and communities get closer to their sustainability goals.As a Senior Writer with GreenBiz.com, I chronicle how tech helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve energy efficiency, conserve water and shrink waste. I started my journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York, and spent 17 years at tech trade magazine, CRN, providing occasional commentary for CNN and CNBC. Along the way, I've been published in Entrepreneur, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. Long ago, I earned a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Follow me on Twitter @GreenTechLady. Email heather@heatherclancy.com with compelling green business success stories or to debate the latest Jasper Fforde novel.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Whenever I take on a briefing with the sustainability folks at a major high-tech vendor, I know I’m usually in for a twofold interview: split between what the company is doing internally to operate more “green” from a business perspective and what its technology can do for other businesses trying to be more responsible about energy efficiency, resource sourcing, water conservation and so on.

When I sat down recently with two of Intel&#039;sIntel&#039;s top corporate responsibility and environmental managers, our conversation favored the former – including some of the innovative things it is doing with respect to water conservation.

In case you didn’t know it, manufacturing chips usually makes for a lot of industrial wastewater – on the order of 9 million gallons for just one of Intel’s plants in Chandler, Arizona. But being that it is one of the few chip companies that still fabricates its own semiconductors, Intel has control over this.

Chandler is the site for several of the company’s most advanced manufacturing facilities, which continue to push the envelope when it comes to the processes used for cleaning wafers, said Todd Brady, an Intel corporate environmental manager.

“Ultrapure water is a hugely important part of making clean wafers, especially when you are talking about transistors that are barely larger than a DNA strand,” he said. “We started asking ourselves how we can make this water as efficiently as possible.”

This water is needed to clean off the chemical-mechanical mixture used to polish the semiconductor surface. The more layers in the chip, the more water is needed to rinse off this stuff.

Intel used to use two gallons of untreated tap water to create one gallon of the ultrapure water that is acceptable for washing fibers and other gunk off semiconductors. Now, it takes an estimated 1.25 gallons to this, which saves both on the energy for processing and on the water itself, Brady said.

That’s just the start of how Intel is rethinking water consumption. The company also takes a unique approach to how it handles the tainted gray water left over after the chips are cleaned.

While many fabricators typically release this liquid – along with the leftover salts and minerals and such – into sewers (a problem of an entirely different nature), Intel is actually cleaning its wastewater. The liquid is piped it to a facility, where it is purified to drinking standards and reinjected back into the local aquifer.

Given that this drought-prone, desert region gets an average of 9 inches of rainfall per year, that’s a big plus for the local community. “We’re trying to bank the water away,” Brady said.

Plus it keeps all the toxic substances that are used in fabrication, including arsenic, antimony, phosphorous, hydrogen peroxide and various acids, out of the local groundwater.

The treatment facility is actually owned by Chander, and Intel is billed for its services. Whatever can’t be cleaned to an acceptable degree of purity is recycled for other uses, such as the site’s chillers or cooling towers, Brady said.

Water conservation practices like these need to become more common, although they aren’t always the first thing on companies’ sustainability lists because they don’t have to pay much for water, yet, at least in the United States. “The reality is that water is still an inexpensive thing in most places,” Brady said.

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